Sometimes there are cases when you want to run multiple instances of the Windows Phone 7 emulator. For example, to test different command line options in separate instances. By default, you cannot customize this behavior in Visual Studio 2010, that by now is the standard way to access the emulator. However, there is still an option provided by Microsoft that is not mentioned too often.

First and foremost, you should be familiar with basic command line operations - how to launch applications from command line and how to send specific parameters when executing an application (or script, for that reason). If you are familiar with these concepts, then you are good to go.

Second, you need to know where the emulator and the default development WP7 OS image are located. On my system, I can find them in the following folders.

If you try running XDE.exe from the emulator folder right away, you will be prompted with this message:

Not exactly what we're looking for, but nonetheless it is helpful. So the emulator by itself won't start - I need to specify an OS image to be loaded. And here is when the console comes into play. Open the system console by pressing the Win+R keys and then typing CMD and clicking OK.

Once the console is open, first of all copy and paste the path to the emulator, and then after a space, copy and paste the path to the OS image.

Once you run this command, the emulator should do a full OS boot (no, the main applications will still be locked) and will get in the "Ready" mode in around 30 seconds. As long as you change the GUID, you can run as many instances as your machine allows you to.